While [Air Walk] had been one of his most used enchantments, Velik had a wide variety to choose from when it came to duplicating his old gear. Another one that stuck out to him was [Mana Drinker], but he wasn’t sure how useful it would be to create an essence configuration for that when his weapon no longer needed mana to power [Shape Shifting] and [Mending].

Continuing along that line of thought, he also wasn’t sure he could make it work the same way as a skill. It seemed to him that even if he was able to create it, that it would send the stolen mana directly to him, not his weapon. That could actually be the preferable outcome, since his new spear wasn’t magical and was entirely likely to break beyond usefulness at some point.

If he’d still had access to the system store and skill lists, he’d have looked for some way to reinforce the weapon, or a skill to create magical copies like his old [Phalanx] skill. But that’s gone now, consumed to make [Dread Lance]. Huh… I wonder, though. Could I extract it back out?

Velik wasn’t sure he wanted to, even if he could. [Phalanx] had been a constant exercise in frustration trying to get the skill to behave in a useful way. On the other hand, he had an unparalleled opportunity to tweak a skill at a fundamental level. If there was ever a chance to gain the skill he’d been envisioning, it was through the limited personal system.

He crested the top of a massive sand dune in three great leaps and pulled up short. The butte was directly ahead of him, maybe five miles away now, but another of the desert monster machines was scuttling around at its base. It appeared small, but that was just the distance trying to deceive him. Velik estimated it was at least ten feet tall and probably a hundred feet long, with legs coming out of either side of its body every foot or so.

It might have resembled a gargantuan millipede if it had just been length and legs, but monsters were never that straightforward. This one also had a row of razor spines going down its back and belly and a trio of massive, whip-like stingers coming off the back end. Long, flat shimmering panels hugged its back on either side of the spine—probably wings that would unfold once the fight started. Its head was a bulbous tip to its body and featured a ring of eyes surrounding a double pair of mandibles arranged in an ‘X’ pattern.

The whole thing was made of interlocking and overlapping metal plates, though Velik couldn’t tell from so far away what kind. He imagined it would be similar to the golems he’d fought, but perhaps not quite the same. Then again, the real threat of the desert was the loss of system support. It was entirely possible that he’d tear that monster apart once he got closer, but the memory of that giant mouth trying to close around him was still fresh in his mind.

If possible, he wanted to spend the rest of his essence and circle around the monster instead of engaging it in a battle. At minimum, he needed to accomplish the first of those two objectives, which meant he needed to finalize his decisions.

He ducked back behind the sand dunes, knowing that wouldn’t be enough to hide him if the millipede monster was truly looking for prey. Not seeing a reason to make it easy on the thing, Velik opted against outlining himself against the night sky.

Okay, enough weighing options. [Mana Drinker] for myself to power regeneration, [Air Walk], and [Dread Lance]. That’s a clear winner. Then I need something like [Phalanx] to give me a weapon in case this new spear can’t hold up to the strain I put on it, but not exactly [Phalanx].

He set the LPS to pouring essence into constructing [Mana Drinker] while he peered into the configuration for [Dread Lance]. The system helpfully separated out the part of the skill that was [Phalanx] and even reconstructed the pieces that had been swapped out when it merged, not that it meant much to Velik.

He didn’t need the ability to create multiple spears. That part could go. Instead, he wanted a single spear crafted from magic-made-solid that could stand up to the abuse he’d put it through. If it couldn’t poke holes in powerful monsters, it was useless to him.

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Working with his desires, the LPS presented him with a potential configuration it tagged as [Spear of Light]. Velik frowned at that. He wasn’t a creature that drew strength from the day. Nor did he want a glowing weapon announcing his position to anything that cared to look. In response, strands of essence unwound and new constellation nodes appeared.

The new tag read [Shadow Striker]

. Now, that’s more like it.

Velik finalized the design, and thirty seconds later, both new skills were added to his status. A little over three thousand essence vanished from his total, and the new skills barely had a few dozen between them. He wondered where that essence actually went; it felt like too much was spent for it to simply be fuel, but then again, he knew nothing about how hungry an LPS got when it was working.

Regardless, his total essence count dropped to just over fifteen thousand with a remaining eight hundred unspent. When he went to spend that, he received a new warning notification.

[Reserves reaching critical level. Your limited personal system may cease functioning if essence runs out completely.]

Since Velik had no idea what that would mean for him or how he’d go about fixing it if that happened, he decided not to touch the last bit of essence. Once he had a stable source of more essence, he’d revisit the idea of future upgrades. For now, he was as prepared as he was going to get.

While he’d been working, he’d kept an ear on the millipede. It glided across the sand with a scraping hiss, nothing at all like what something with that many legs was supposed to sound like. His suspicion was that it wasn’t actually walking, an idea supported by the lack of tracks in the desert behind it. Whatever the reason, the noise was distinctive enough that it made it easy for Velik to keep track of where it was.

He poked his head over the top of the dune, his eyes automatically moving toward the sound, only to recoil in surprise. The millipede had split into three sections. One of them was still skimming the sands in a wide lap around the butte, but the other two had unfolded those panels Velik had rightly guessed to be some sort of wings and were fluttering up the side.

Even as he watched, a massive bird launched itself out of a hole near the top and took to the air. The millipedes immediately gave chase, but they weren’t fast enough to catch it in a race of pure speed. That was why they cheated.

Some hidden compartment in the face end of one of them opened, and a net made out of twisting ropes of lightning shot out. It expanded to an impossible hundred feet in diameter, the lightning simply growing to accommodate the distance without ever thinning out or fraying.

The bird tucked its wings and went into a spinning dive, dodging the net but losing its forward momentum in the process. Both millipedes closed the distance, taking advantage of their lower elevation to intercept the bird.

Velik judged that, barring any more tricks, the monster bird could still escape the giant metal bugs, but he didn’t think spectating on the aerial race was the best use of his time. He needed to get to the top of that butte and find a way into the sky bridge there, then figure out how to use it. Presumably, unlike the one he’d hit with Jensen’s team, it would be in working condition.

There were a lot of assumptions in that plan, but he was going to proceed like he was right. The divine beasts wanted him to follow. That meant they had to leave the door open. An ugly thought in the back of his mind reminded him that now that he was outside the confines of the system, they could kill him without repercussion. He’d already followed far enough.

That didn’t make any sense to Velik, though. Tesir had been there to test him. They wanted something from Velik, something they couldn’t get just by killing him. The clues all pointed him this way. Answers were waiting for him inside that sky bridge. He just needed to get there.

He wasn’t going to get a better opportunity than right now. Two of the three monsters were already miles away, soaring through the night as they chased after that bird. Unless Velik was very much mistaken, that was the same monster that had hauled him away from the giant mouth, and unlike the other monsters, it was very much flesh and blood.

Another indicator that the divine beasts are trying to help me get to this sky bridge. Could have just carried me the whole way, though, if that’s the case.

He crested the sand dune, double checked the position of the last millipede, then sprinted off to his left in a wide loop that would add an extra mile to his run, but would hopefully take him far enough away from the monster that he wouldn’t have to test his spear against it.

That was too much to ask for. Velik made it maybe halfway down the far side of the dune—approximately two seconds of running—before the millipede swung around to face him. Its X-shaped mandibles clacked together with loud, metallic scraping sounds, then its powerful legs churned as it charged across the desert at full speed.

“Guess we’re fighting about it then,” Velik said, altering his course to meet it head-on.